


Matched Souls

by Pingoodle (ThatAloneOne)



Series: Steal Your Heart [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 11:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/Pingoodle
Summary: A reincarnation AU with the main characters from Steal Your Heart. A gift to LMoriarty for her birthday, and also to myself.





	Matched Souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LMoriarty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMoriarty/gifts).

It was their third life together that defined them. But truly, it hadn’t changed much from their first. The only difference was in the intention. 

Here’s the thing: matched souls aren’t always matched for their own benefits. Sometimes they were matched for the balance of something more — one to push, and one to pull. One to ask, and one to give. 

* * *

That first life played out like a story — a mystery, a romance, a glimpse of horror. All that and more, woven into one. 

* * *

Naythan was a third son — too privileged to hold a job, too secondary to warrant a position on the estate, and at seventeen, too young to be off at war. Further, as a bastard son, Naythan wasn’t allowed the same free reign as his brothers. Soldiers, the both of them, from birth. 

He had never been his brothers’ equal, and he hated that as much as he loved it. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to create, to see, to make every part of the world his own to explore. 

On a scarlet sunset day, he was making the rounds of the property when he saw a carriage wrecked in the road. One horse lay in a ditch, panting and struggling to free itself from the mud, its red-rimmed eyes rolling. The other was still tied to the toppled carriage, laid out still and dead. 

Naythan froze. And that was how he heard the call for help, weak and thready, from within the carriage. 

He staggered forward, spurred into action. His boots sucked in the mud, but he didn’t care about how ruined they were becoming. “I’m coming! Hold on!”

It was the work of a decent half hour to get the mud dug out from under the carriage and get the girl out onto the lane. When she’d held out a hand and let herself be pulled from the pitch cave of the wrecked carriage, she’d looked like an angel, ascending from the dark. She was pale, blonde, and the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. 

Naythan crouched by her side, careful not to seem too threatening. “I’m Naythan Simeon. My father’s the lord of these lands.” He worried the hem of his shirt between his fingers, not knowing where to put his hands or his eyes. “Are you alright?”

She shaded her eyes from the sun, her neck a slender strip of porcelain between her sharp chin and her high-collared dress. “Sir- I- I apologize. I’m Meadhbh, Meadhbh Tuller. I was travelling to join my sisters to our summer- but our horses- my driver got thrown- I don’t-“

Naythan took her waving hand and folded it tight in both of his. She stared up at him with wide eyes, obviously scared out of her mind. “It’s alright. You don’t need to explain. Just- You’re welcome to stay a while. See if you can’t figure out where your family has gone.”

Meadhbh thought about that for a moment, her hair liquid gold in the last of the sun. Then she nodded, closing her other hand over his. His heart jumped, unruly as ever. “Thank you. Truly."

When her family proved difficult to find, Meadhbh tried to make the best of it. They spent weeks together, reading through all the books in Naythan’s father’s library. Then they switched to writing. At least, Naythan wrote. Meadhbh drew the scenes he created, creating whole worlds with quick scratches of a quill. 

Magic, he called her. His magic girl. But like any magic, Meadhbh had a price. 

She hadn’t taken ill immediately after the carriage overturned, but in the weeks following, she weakened. It wasn’t a fever, or any wound that Naythan could see. She’d stripped so he could search her, an excruciating experience for the both of them. 

When the fourth week since their introduction hit, Meadhbh didn’t get out of bed in the morning. 

Naythan went looking for her around lunch, ready to chide her for not wanting to get out of bed, but found her still asleep. Meadhbh was grey and still, so much that he had to throw himself across the bed to reach for her throat, begging whatever higher power existed that he would find her breathing. 

She was. 

Before he could stop himself, he had laid a gentle kiss on Meadhbh’s lips. If he was anything close to a man, he could be her Prince Charming. Wake her from whatever death sleep she was experiencing. 

But more than anything, he didn’t want to see her go without having done that. She was everything he had ever wanted, dropped on his father’s stoop like an elaborate present from the universe. 

Meadhbh’s eyelashes fluttered, and Naythan held his breath. When she opened her eyes, it was like the sun rising. “Writer boy,” she breathed. She smiled at him, barely dimmer than the day before. “Good morning.”

Naythan let his head sag back onto her pillow, his heart still racing in his chest. “My magic girl. Afternoon.”

Meadhbh rolled to face him, the bed dipping between them. She smelled like sleep and lavender, like a story of love. “Is it that late? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to worry you.”

Naythan closed his eyes. “You couldn’t not. When I came in you were-“

Meadhbh shifted against the bed, and he knew that she was shifting closer. “Only sleeping, my writer.”

Naythan’s jaw clenched. “You looked dead, Meadhbh.”

She stayed silent for a moment. Then she said, “oh.” It sounded near mournful. Her hand found his. “I’m sorry.”

They lay there, together. With the worry seeping away, Naythan could nearly forget the impropriety of being in her room, in her _ bed _, whether she was bed-bound or not. And lord, did he hope she wasn’t bound to her bed. Not yet. He still meant to show her the pond, the forest, the world. 

“Writer boy?”

Naythan opened his eyes, the curtains hanging over her bed red as hearts-blood. “Yes, my magic girl?”

“Would it help?” she said, hesitant. Her hand was steel-tight around his, for all her weakness. “If I could prove it? That I was still here? Still alive.”

Silent, he nodded. 

Before he could think, she’d swung herself up and over him. Her eyes glittered with wickedness and… something more. Her weight was placed somewhere… specific, and Naythan squeaked. “Meadhbh!”

“I swear,” she said against his lips, and then swallowed his sounds. “I swear I’m here.” Another kiss, even more devouring. She moved against him, deliberate. “I swear I’m alive.”

Naythan shuddered, pinned against the bed and never, ever wishing to be free. 

After an infinite moment, Meadhbh drew back, her lips sinfully pink. Her hands were braced on his shoulders, drifting up and down his upper arms, searing heat following in their wake. “My heart is yours, Naythan, if you want it. I can only hope-“

“And mine yours,” Naythan told her, insensate with pleasure. It was Meadhbh. It was heat and searing lines against his skin. It was all he ever dreamed. “My heart. Take it."

Meadhbh leant in, licking a stripe up his neck, and kissed his mouth once more, biting and clashing and taking. Then she smiled, wicked against his lips. Naythan panted, breathing her in. 

“Thank you,” she said, sweet as sugar, and dragged a hand down to the centre of his chest. 

* * *

Of course, we’ve all seen their second time ‘round. 

* * *

The sight of him seared. It took all Meadhbh had not to reel backward, scramble away from the sheer _ wrongness _ he emanated. Tears burned in her eyes, half helpless rage and half sheer will. 

Tears were the most human thing there was, right up there with regret. Clearly, it was also right up there with messing where nature had left well enough alone. Of course this cursed place would have a Hybrid lying around. Oh, she’d have to be careful. It wouldn't be so easy, this time, to charm her way out of an awful situation. 

Her mother wasn’t here. And she wasn’t behind this, for once. Meadhbh was all alone. No way out except for any path she could make myself. 

So Meadhbh waited for her new handler to make a first move. It wasn’t an impressive one. 

He sputtered and choked on his own indecision, half-leaning on the air like it would grow a wall and support him. “Hey. Um. Subject-“

Meadhbh snarled and bit the words out before she could stop herself. “If anyone calls me Subject A one more _ fu _-“

An airhorn blast stopped her. Because profanity was worse than kidnapping. Meadhbh would never wish capture on anyone but herself, but if Mab was here, the chewing out she would deliver… this was her style. Her kind of mission. 

Meadhbh closed her eyes. Better to look vulnerable. Better for him not to see the rage in her eyes. "More time, I will kill everyone that enters this room for the rest of eternity."

Better to start strong. Meadhbh could always rein herself back from here. Tame herself, and make believe that he was the one taming her. 

Anything to keep Mab out of their hands. Anything for Tulip. Anything for her family. 

So when the Hybrid stuttered and stumbled over himself, she let herself smile. 

* * *

The third time they met was truer than the first. Nothing forced them together but themselves. And isn’t that the definition of matched souls?

* * *

The woman he’d been trying not to watch all night slid in next to him at the bar, liquid as flame. “Hey there,” she said, her honey voice melting on Naythan, southern and sweet. “Saw you over here all lonely-like and thought, well, we can’t have that!”

Maybe if he hadn’t been lonely-

Maybe if anyone else had looked at him like that before-

Maybe if he had touched another human being in the last-

Maybe if his father hadn’t called him earlier-

Maybe if she had been anyone else-

But she was herself, sweet as arsenic. Naythan smiled at her, the kind of schoolboy grin he used to wish came out more dashing. But if this was what she liked from a distance, she’d like it even more up close. “You came to save me from myself?”

Meadhbh slid an arm around his shoulders, melting the tension away. Her perfume washed over him, floral with a faint hint of musk. “Came to save myself too, sweet pea. It’s awful boring in here.” She paused, settling tight against his side. “Meadhbh. And you are?”

Naythan turned to get a better look at her, and his name faltered on his tongue when he saw how close she was. Meadhbh leant in, nose to nose with him, her green eyes freckled in brown and gold. “Uh. Naythan.”

Meadhbh smiled, leaning in to press her sin-red mouth to his cheek. “I see.” She licked her lips, her lipstick smudging slightly onto her teeth. It only made her look wilder, more provocative. “If you’re nay, can I be yay? Because I have some ideas that might sway you."

She murmured them in his ear, and without even properly thinking about it, Naythan was standing and following her out of the bar. Her hand tight around his wrist, Meadhbh tugged him around down the sidewalk, past the flickering streetlight, and just past the mouth of the alley, making them invisible from the street. 

Midnight air settled humid on Naythan’s skin, his arms pricked in goosebumps. Meadhbh had released him a moment before, and was watching him rub the marks out of his wrist, her eyes like green diamond. “Ready?” she asked, and it came out sounding dirtier than any real curse could have. 

Naythan nodded and then she was on him. Meadhbh pressed him back against the brick of the alley, her fingers quick on his shirt buttons, hunting for skin. Their teeth clacked, once, twice, and Naythan nearly bit his own tongue off when her hand wandered down. 

“Oh, the things I could do to you,” she purred. Naythan gasped, tasting her more than the smog of the city. “I could taste every inch of your skin. Tear you to pieces. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” Naythan whispered. Or he tried, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Meadhbh tightened her grip and he screamed. “Yes. Yes."

With a last bruising kiss, Meadhbh followed gravity down, mouthing a line down his stomach. His belt clattered to the ground, either a few feet away or a thousand. Naythan was too far gone to care. 

With her hands making quick work of the front of his pants, Meadhbh looked up at him, her lipstick streaked and faded, the prints mirrored between the open edges of his shirt. She braced one hand on his hip and yanked, keeping him pressed against the wall. “Oh, look at you. Red as my lipstick and I’m not even trying.”

Then her mouth got to work and he forgot anything she said. Words turned meaningless in his mouth, his whole body in open rebellion. 

When he went limp Meadhbh rose to kiss him once more, her body covering his, her hands in his hair messing it all to hell. She tasted of salt and skin, of faintly sweet lipstick and alcohol. He chased each kiss, chased each taste, hungry and breathless. Finally, starved for air, he let his head thud back against the brick, the stars blinking in and out overhead. 

When he could halfway breathe again, Meadhbh working marks into his neck with single-minded ferocity, he did his best impression of speech. “Is there anything- should I- anything for? You?”

Meadhbh drew her head back, backlit and nearly haloed in the distant streetlight. Her hips stayed pressed to his, rough denim against something much softer. “Not as such, sweet pea.” She worried her lip, the lipstick long gone. “But if… If I could have a try at your heart, maybe we could try this again someday."

Naythan’s heart pounded in his chest. Like this, it felt more than strong enough to share. “Of course. My heart is yours, if you want it.”

Meadhbh smiled, her head tipped to the side, a wicked ruin. “I appreciate it, sweet pea, I really do,” she told him. Her accent took a run and tumble, twisting into something more New York than anything else. “It’s been fun.”

Her hands slid down to his chest and then-

* * *

Now you see. No push, no pull, no outside scheme, and yet…

If only in some lifetime, he might realize that the hunger in her eyes wasn’t for what he hoped. Maybe then, it would turn out better. 

Maybe next round, they’d balance out differently. 

He can only hope. 

She will only devour him.


End file.
